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The slippery slope: Gay marriage

Well, I must confess that Obama has finally dragged me into the light of new understanding.

We are indeed a country that stresses equality for all and equal civil rights for all. No one should be discriminated against. We shouldn’t penalize people for who they fall in love with, and it’s really none of my business who someone wants to marry. True love should always prevail over arbitrary legal distinctions. That’s why I am announcing my intention to push for legal recognition of my upcoming marriage to both Susan and Nancy, as soon as I can convince my first wife Susan to go along with it.

What? You thought I was talking about gay marriage? Oh boy, I can already feel the repercussions coming from folks who claim it’s disingenuous to link the push for gay marriage to that of polygamy — it is two entirely separate things, they say. Rick Santorum was loudly jeered when he linked those two in front of a college crowd, so who am I to make the same mistake?

It’s a bit too late to excoriate social conservatives for the mere thought of such a link — the link has already been made in reality several times over. Case in point — the Muslim community. Impromptu remarks, such as “tweets,” are often very revealing of what people really think. When the state of New York legalized gay marriage last year, Moein Khawaja (executive director in the Philadelphia district of CAIR — the Council on American-Islamic Relations) tweeted “Easy to support gay marriage today bc (sic) it’s mainstream. Lets see same people go to bat for polygamy, its the same argument.”

TheMuslim Link is a newspaper in the Baltimore/Washington area, and they ran an article in October, 2011 entitled “Polygamy: Tis the season?” That article makes the same connection between increasing support for gay marriage eventually leading to increased support for legalized polygamy. A Baltimore imam, Hassan Amin, was quoted as saying, “We should strive to have it legalized, because Allah has already legalized it.”

The cold hard fact is that polygamy is already widely practiced here in the U.S. —- it is simply not legalized. David J. Rusin’s article “Gay Marriage Has Islamists Eyeing Polygamy” in the National Review reported that approximately 100,000 Muslims here in the U.S. live with multiple “wives” — an official wife and several “unofficial” wives. That is about the same number as polygamy practicing fundamentalist Mormons.

So, when you talk about the social unacceptability of polygamy, you can be charged with discriminating against two different religions. In Great Britain, polygamous Muslims can receive extra welfare benefits because of their large families. Here in the U.S., the “unofficial” wives often abuse the welfare system by claiming single mother status.

I’ll bet a future argument favoring legalizing polygamy will be to curb this welfare fraud.

Another argument will be the awful injustice (tears flowing down our cheeks) of a Muslim man moving to the U.S. who can only take one of his wives with him, even though all were his officially married wives in his country of origin, which currently allows legal polygamous marriages.

Polygamists are starting to feel the Obama “hopey changy thing” as they file lawsuits challenging our nation to legalize their practice.

Joe Darger and his 3 “wives” put in an appearance on “The O’Reilly Factor,” arguing for the decriminalization of their polygamous family.

Another polygamous family, Kody Brown, his legal wife Meri, and three other “sister wives,” have filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Utah’s anti-polygamy laws, and it’s all based on —- surprise, surprise —- the Supreme Court decision in 2003 regarding gay rights. Their lawyer is Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor. The ACLU in Utah stated that Utah will “have to step up to prove that a polygamous relationship is detrimental to society,” and also opined that the nuclear family “may not be necessarily the best model.”

Hollywood is certainly doing their part in desensitizing the viewing public with TV shows such as “Big Love” and “Sister Wives.”

A few years ago, I wrote an article about the slippery slope we are playing with in advocating gay marriage, and I made the polygamy link. I, and others who expressed that opinion, really caught some flak for it. A few years from now when polygamy becomes the new “civil rights” issue, will conservatives hear any apologies from liberals who said, “We don’t think that will happen?”

Not on your life. I already know what they will throw up in our faces — “Biblical heroes like Abraham, David, Jacob and Solomon were all polygamists, so what’s your problem with it?”

Of course that totally ignores the terrible consequences those characters suffered through jealously — Sarah made Abraham kick his other wife out; Rachel and Leah fought over Jacob; David murdered Bathsheba’s husband, so he could have her as a second wife; multiple wives was part of Solomon’s problem that resulted in his kingdom being torn in half.

God made Adam and Eve, not Adam with Eve, Susan and Lisa. Polygamy was man’s bad idea, not God’s.

Congratulations, Obama — by supporting gay marriage you are pushing your country down the slippery slope while you stand at the top of the hill claiming the “high moral ground.” When Obama’s way diverts from God’s way, I know who is right.

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Stephen Rowland is a Columbia resident with a master of arts degree in Biblical Studies who writes on issues from a conservative, Christian viewpoint. E-mail him at mrstephenrowland@aol.com.